It's Vinny!

Andre Vincent started performing at the tender age of seven. Since then, he has never looked back, and has been a street performer, a circus star, a chorister, a DJ, a stand up, and even Santa Claus. We caught up with our Uncle Vinne for a full and frank discussion.

"Look at the size of him! He'd be a really good opera singer!"

"Stand up has become so watered down recently," Andre Vincent announces, taking a bite out of his bacon sandwich, and daring us to contradict him, "and there isn't really anything out there at the moment." We wisely nod in agreement. If you have already read Andre's diatribe on what he sees as the poor state of today's circuit comedians - contributed as part of our Christmas roundup of 2001 - you'll know that this is a man with strong opinions on the subject. "There are too many people out there who get to a fast, funny 20 minutes and won't expand with it, and won't play with it, and won't think 'Where am I going with this, what am I saying?', which is I think quite an important thing. I think after two years of doing that you become such a hack, and just turn in to a bitter, twisted comic." He grins. "Which isn't good, as we know." Andre has just returned from a weekend headlining the Comedy Store in Manchester. Having already performed stand up for over ten years, he still questions his position in the comedy hierarchy. "I still didn't think that (a) I was confident enough, or (b) good enough to close it. I was still going, am I a closing Store act? And I've got four or five hours of material behind me, and I'm still questioning. These people have got a good 10 minutes, a so-so 15 minutes and a badly thrown together 20 minutes, and they're going, 'Why aren't I playing the store every week?'"

"In Alabama, they didn't even know the country of England existed, let alone hearing this voice walking on stage - 'Hey, isn't he cute? Listen to his voice!' I won them over with that. I thought comedy was so easy."

Having first stepped on stage at the age of seven, Andre has experience in many different genres of live performance. At eleven years of age, he became a chorister and three years later when his voice broke, his family began to push him towards becoming an opera singer - "Look at the size of him! He'd be a really good opera singer!" However, he had already been bitten by the acting bug, and continued performing on stage. One part required some training in circus skills, and so Andre travelled to Paris to train with an international circus troupe, with which he began travelling across Europe. He became quickly disillusioned with the nature of the work - "You do one show, tent down, and move on. It was really knackering work, and I just thought I can't be bothered with this" - and he found himself back to England in 1986, just in time for the major boom in street performing. "Covent Garden was the place to be. It was probably stronger than what was then the comedy circuit." On the street, he joined other performers like Eddie Izzard, John Hegley, Mark Thomas, Neil Mullarkey and Mike Myers. "It was an amazing time. It was very profitable for about three years." After another brief abroad, this time working for Disney in America as an "imagineer" ("I hated it, it was such a fascist world"), Andre was invited to join The Coors Comedy Commandos as they toured the southern states of America, even though he had no previous experience of stand up comedy. "In Alabama, they didn't even know the country of England existed, let alone hearing this voice walking on stage - 'Hey, isn't he cute? Listen to his voice!' I won them over with that. I thought comedy was so easy." On his return to England in 1990, he continued his expedition in to stand up with a regular gig at the Tramshed in Woolwich. At this time, the Tramshed was something of a notorious venue, as it was mainly populated by squaddies from a nearby army camp, being trained to go off to the Gulf War. The atmosphere in the club was, as a consequence, somewhat saturated in testosterone, and known to be quite a dangerous gig for performers. "We had no idea about the politeness and the way of doing stand up, so we would just walk out going 'Are you off to the war next week? Hope you die!' That's how we dealt with it."

"I got called [by one of the Edinburgh papers] once the 'black angel of topical comedy' which I thought was horrible, because I just want to be a slightly cheeky chappy."

Following on from this, most of the other comedy gigs he was doing at the time seemed easy by comparison, although he still had some bad experiences in the early days. "I did the original Comedy Store. I actually had a woman follow me all the way from the stage back to the lift, shouting at the back of my head 'YOU'RE SHIT, GO BACK TO SCHOOL!'" Much of his early stand up experience comes from the time he lived in America, and Andre is a great admirer of many American comedians. Like most comics, he admires Bill Hicks, although he has some reservations about the reverence Hicks is held in today. "I thought he was great, but I don't think he was the great sayer that everybody thinks he is. I think he had some great things to say and I enjoyed the fact that he was prepared to say them. But then, you realise that he had cancer for at least a year to 18 months before he died, and he knew, and he was still performing and never mentioned it. I just think, you're cheating the audience. And yet he was the person that was saying you should do everything you feel. And now I've got it I'm telling everybody." Andre found out he had cancer at the beginning of March, and will undergo an operation to remove the tumour in the middle of April ("I'm going to film the operation. I've asked the doctor. I think there might be something there. In a three hour video or whatever, there will be a moment of - there it is, there's the cancer being taken out and put into a jar, and here's the jar.") Upon hearing the news, he took the decision to work his situation in to his on stage performances. "I say I've been doing all these tests, I've got a few gags. And then I just go 'a few weeks ago a doctor told me I've got cancer... which has left you completely quiet' - which it really does. Cancer does leave an audience reeling, but I just go - look at me! I'm not saying that's it. I'm bouncing about the stage going 'Way-hey! We're here!' It's not my problem, it's your problem. And what I'm saying is get over it. Don't look at me as a time point for your own morality, which is something a lot of people do. Suddenly they know somebody who's got cancer, therefore they could get it."

"As soon as Alistair McGowan has done it, you realise then it is in the world of the bland, and it is time to move on. If Alistair McGowan is doing any subject you have touched on, drop it. It's then officially shit."

Throughout his career, Andre has always taken aspects from his real life and talked about them on stage, and sees no difference between talking about cancer than talking about his diabetes, or the time that he broke his knee on stage in Holland. He is currently developing a show based around his health problems - past and present - and is considering the possibility of bringing the show to Edinburgh. "I feel there's a real scope for an hour on that, or at least on the medical conditions. It's just a question of finding someone prepared to take the risk, because it really is going to be a last minute put together thing because I'm not going to be up really until June, so it's going to be a two months putting together exactly how I feel and what I went through. But then at least I've got the whole of May to sit down while I'm in bed to write it. Which most comedians haven't." He is already playing around with titles for the show - "I've the idea of calling it 'Bill Hicks: You were a pussy.'" Following the Festival, Andre is looking forward to seeing where his career is going to go next. Although he is still enjoying performing on stage, he has some doubts about continuing along that path for too much longer. "I'm in my mid-thirties now, at forty I don't want to still be getting up on stage and trying to talk to an audience and realising, I'm just going to have to do some cock gags now to get their attention. You see older members of the comedy fraternity that do that, and you think, please stop it. Come on now, let's find you something proper to do. Let's turn you into a producer." He professes a great admiration for other performers that are able to switch from one role to another. "Someone like Lee Evans I think is brilliant that he can jump from doing the films and then going out on the road and still enjoy the road. If there is anyone of our ilk that I envy immensely I'd say it would be Lee. I'd really love to work with him, just from loving old time film and slap stick, and I was gutted when he decided to do that terrible sitcom that he used another fat bloke."

"You can probably scan the cable stations late at night and find me or Junior or Sean Meo selling our comedy arse for the cheapest gag you can imagine just so we're in front of the camera."

Andre has some plans to return to the world of acting. "I'd make a lovely Downs Syndrome or a mentally retarded kid. I could do that so well." But seriously, though. "I still have this dream of Hamlet being fat, there's enough references to Hamlet being fat in the script. I'd love to do it one day." In the meantime, Andre will be spending the next few months concentrating on his recovery, and is aiming to be back on stage for a cancer benefit in Drury Lane on the 26th of May. "I think it's a nice thing to pitch for, it makes total sense." He is also learning to deal with the many offers of help he has received since getting his diagnosis. "I'm just going to start asking people's blood types and touching them round the side, and going 'Is this kidney strong?'"